“Professor Paige,” he said. “I always thought scientists were more poetic than other people, in the Aristotelian sense. But in truth, as poets, we’re weenies. I won’t be coming to class anymore.”

Wynton, a big-bellied man, agreed. “I’m baffled. I was willing to give it a try and I have, but enough,” Wynton said.

“It seems such a wispy endeavor,” said Harry, a young man from Oregon. Harry’s head was terribly large.

“Count me out as well,” Dr. Mali said. “At first I found poetry an exquisite puzzle, fully distracting to me. It involved a pleasant stress—avoiding sentiment, using finesse—trying to say what would seem unsayable. Now each night I dread the half hour at my word processor.”

“But if you’re all quitting, I’m out of a goddamn job!” I said. “People, please reconsider.”

“That’s the way it goes,” someone said, and several of the class members shrugged.

I flumped into my chair seat, causing my briefcase to tip over. It disgorged papers, reference texts, index cards. I let them spill.

Harry said, “Paige, since this is our last meeting together, why don’t you tell us a story.”

I gave them some of the Gilgamesh epic. I told how Gilgamesh, king of Uruk, had a second self created by the gods and this being was a man called Enkidu.

“Enki Denki Doo,” Carl said.

“This is an old story,” Wynton said.

“It’s third millennium,” I said. “B.C., Archaic Sumerian . . .”

“Tell me, Paige. How am I different from the women you teach at Harvard?” asked Dr. Mali.

“They’re all named Elizabeth,” I said.

“My grandmother’s name,” said Dr. Gil.

Our bedroom in the rental house had soft warped wooden floors with runnels and gouges. On the plaster walls, cracks traced the shapes of states, continents.

I was in bed under a sheet, propped up with a pillow against the carved headboard. The carving was an Italian farm-life scene—animals and men, haymows, a wheelbarrow.

My heart banged.

The dream I’d just had said there was no death, that nothing was terminable. Everything kept existing in a big all and all.

Rain lashed the window now. Traffic on the wet street made surf sounds.

I watched the ceiling, which Raf had swabbed with marigold paint.

Something drew me from the bed to the window. A fellow stood in the yellow side yard beside the liquid-oxygen company. His breath was like steam. The summer rain weighted his old suit and bubbled on his face and hands and the lenses of his eyeglasses. He was any age, bald, still as a table lamp.

I needed a drink of water but I waited for the figure to move. A shrug or nod or a head twitch would’ve satisfied me, as long as the man did not dissolve.